by Greg Bear
Tik, Dour and Harka were the first to reach a narrowing of the ledge. They turned with their backs to the abyss and sidled along the face, at one point stepping over a yard-wide gap where the ledge had spoiled away. Shahpur, Michael and Nikolai had a more difficult time spanning the gap, and Nikolai’s foot slipped on the opposite side. Michael grabbed hold of his hand and drew him along to a wider portion, where they lay against the face and took several deep breaths.
“That was not there before,” Nikolai said. “The path gets more dangerous every season.”
The ledge widened to a broad, rounded lip, giving them at least the illusion of security. Around a blade of rock that had fallen long ago from some higher spoiling, they saw the object of their journey. Shahpur followed the leading Sidhe and the Breed, and Nikolai pressed ahead of Michael, panting and cursing.
They all gathered on a broad rock stage before a deep cave-like hollow. “The mountain,” Nikolai said. Many miles away, yet as clear as if it stood just yards before them, was Heba Mish. “No one knows how tall it is, not even the Sidhe.”
Far below the rock stage and cave, clouds poured into a deep chasm, leaving behind wisps which slowly unwound and vanished. At the bottom of the chasm, a deep blue-green slope of ice accepted the falling cloud and scattered it into broad rivers of mist, which slid down worn, rounded grooves. Michael felt dizzy, peering over the rim of the stage. He lifted his gaze and followed a sheer flank of delicately poised snow on the mountain. The white mass reached three-quarters of the way to the peak before being sullied by outcrops of black rock.
“Now we wait,” Nikolai said. As if at a signal, the three Sidhe and the Breed moved back into the cave, leaving the humans to listen to the silence.
“What are we waiting for?” Michael asked.
“The Snow Faces,” Nikolai replied.
Night came and Michael lay comfortably enough on the chill cave floor. Nikolai slept restlessly beside him. Shahpur sat on his haunches, appearing to be awake. The Sidhe sat with legs crossed, lined up against the opposite wall of the cave.
Michael couldn’t sleep. He kept trying to probe Harka. The wraith-like Sidhe’s aura was virtually empty of any memory, as if he had been created just moments before, with no ancestry and no past. Michael wondered if certain Sidhe chose to wipe their lives away. There was a way it could be done with the discipline, boiling memory off with a kind of focused hyloka…
Nikolai grumbled and opened his eyes. “Waiting is miserable,” he said. “Especially here.”
“How do you know the right time to come?”
“I have my contacts. Word gets passed along. Arborals whisper, or I listen to Amorphals in their deep cavern homes. Or another wanderer, like Bek or myself or Shahpur, hears about it and the pilgrims begin their journeys. Then we gather. I’ve always used the stepping stone from Inyas Trai. Others hike and climb. Some never say how they arrive; they just do. Not always, not every season… sometimes not for years.
“I’ve heard the sign first appear in a pool in the Irall. The pool is very deep, with ice at the bottom, and the Sidhe watchers know, when it turns black as night, that the season is coming. They pass the word in secret… Adonna might not approve of Sidhe regarding a genuine mystery.” He rearranged his legs and closed his eyes again. “In the morning, perhaps, when the wind rises again.”
Michael lay in a state between sleep and waking, much like the state he had been in on his second night in the Realm, while perched on the rock waiting for the warmth of dawn.
Orange light slowly filled the cave, accompanied by a low, deep hissing. Michael stood, stretching his cramped legs. Nikolai did likewise, complaining bitterly.
The sun was rising beyond Heba Mish, reflecting from the westerward mountains and casting a dull purple backlight on the snow slope. Clouds in the east became bathed in flame, green and orange and lavender. Several shafts of light broke through the clouds and dashed themselves against the unseen side of Heba Mish, creating an aurora-like edge of yellow around the peak.
High above, the pearly ribbon broke down into its separate arcs and faded. Snow had fallen in the darkness and lay glittering outside the cave.
Nikolai and Michael walked onto the rock stage. The clouds pouring into the chasm had been depleted. Now there was just a hollow invisible rush of air. Cracks had formed in the ice and occasional deep bass rumbles and explosions rose to their ears as the cracks broadened and the ice calved.
“Here it comes,” said Shahpur behind them. Far off, the hiss increased in volume until it was discernible as a combined wailing and roaring. Icy breezes slapped at them and rushed through the cave with a ghastly jug-blowing hoot. The Sidhe and the Breed came out onto the stage, their hair pinned back by the rising wind. The hooting became continuous.
With sudden violence, the wind drove them back and threatened to blow them from the stage. Michael felt himself flung down, then lifted until his feet were inches above the rock. He hung suspended for a seeming eternity as Nikolai and the others clawed for purchase, lying spread-eagled on the stage. Then the balance of pressures shifted and he fell back. The roar was now a painful scream; wind rushed down the gap between the mountains, pouring into the chasm and leaping over to begin its climb up the white, snow-covered flank of Heba Mish.
The flank’s delicate balance was upset. With barely heard reports, it began to disintegrate. Mile-wide sheets sloughed off and descended like ragged paper on a cushion of air. The sheets broke up and the wind snatched at their fragments, powdering them, grabbing and lofting great billows of snow.
Amoeboid, the billows obscured the side of the mountain, then the rock outcrops, and finally shot above the peak.
It seemed like hours before the snow reached its zenith. Again the wind stopped. For breathless minutes the billows hung in a curtain above Heba Mish; then they descended.
“Now,” Nikolai said.
Michael squinted, trying not to lose any detail. The curtain broke up in residual pockets of unstable air. The pockets sculpted the falling snow, slicing away this extremity and that, forcing the cloud to push outward here and slide inward there. A shape slowly emerged from the turmoil.
“Number one,” Nikolai said. The features abruptly clarified. It was a man’s face, young-looking, lightly bearded. Michael didn’t recognize it. The face spread over Heba Mish, miles wide, and then decayed. The clouds continued their descent until more features formed. Very indistinct at first, then crystal sharp, came the second face—a Spryggla, Michael was certain, because of its resemblance to Lin Piao Tai. The next face was so familiar he sucked in cold air and almost disrupted his hyloka. Familiar—but who was it? Narrow nosed, strong and youthful, sharply chiseled…
“Two and three,” Nikolai said. “Now it will fall, make one more, and all will be finished.”
Michael stared at the face, trying to recall where he had seen it before. “I know him,” he muttered. “I know who that is!”
But his memory balked. The fourth face formed, that of a stern and impressive Sidhe, eyes haunted. Michael didn’t care. He was so close, and the memory seemed so important he wanted to strike himself, pull his hair—anything to force the answer.
And it came.
The third face was not quite identifiable because of its youth—the man had been old when last they met.
It was Arno Waltiri, now falling into random drifts down the ravaged flank of Heba Mish and into the ice chasm miles below.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The Sidhe were the first to leave, walking back along the same path but climbing a few yards up to another ledge to avoid the stepping stone. They were not returning to Inyas Trai; they had other destinations which could be reached only by hiking out of the mountains. Shahpur remained on the stone stage, his covered face unreadable, his mind as horribly repellent as before. Only the Breed, Bek, elected to return with Nikolai and Michael to Inyas Trai. “I’ve never been there before,” he said. “And I’ve run from Sidhe coursers long enough. The city s
ounds like a haven, for the time being at least.”
Nikolai didn’t encourage him, but the Breed had made up his mind. Where humans were welcome, surely Breeds would not be despised.
The ledge was even more treacherous after the passage of the winds. Snow had fallen from the sides of their mountain and compacted to slippery ice under their feet Michael was very tired and glad to see the stepping stone.
He felt as if he had lived a dozen lifetimes, and left something unresolved in each one. He was a many-formed ghost caught between at least two realities, neither of them quite solid and convincing. Who had Arno Waltiri been, that his face should be carved in clouds of snow in the Realm of the Sidhe?
Perhaps Clarkham was not the goal of his travels after all, not the one to return him to Earth or help the humans in the Realm. But Waltiri was dead… or rather, Michael had been informed of his death. In the “real” existence of Earth, such a message—such information—was certain. Nobody in Michael’s experience had ever been so cruel as to lie about the death of a friend, and he had no reason to suspect Golda.
Perhaps she hadn’t known, either. Or perhaps he had deceived them all.
Perhaps he hadn’t even been human.
Michael’s thoughts were deeply mired as he stepped up on the stone. Nikolai and Bek followed, Bek with hands trembling, as afraid of the Sidhe as Michael would have been, once.
And should have been, now. In the instant between stones, he heard voices engaged in conversation. Whether the hearing had been arranged as warning, he was never to know. The voices discussed his status in Inyas Trai, his position with the Ban of Hours, the status of humans in the Realm—and mention was made of the Council of Eleu and of the Maln.
He emerged in warm sunlight. Neither Nikolai nor Bek stood beside him on the stone. Ulath and four male Sidhe in pearly gray waited on the gravel surrounding the stone. Ulath’s expression was tense, grim. He could feel her aura pulsing angrily, sense her restrained power.
The male Sidhe were coursers from the Irall. He gathered that much before they became aware of his abilities and sealed their memories.
“I remind you,” Ulath said, “that he is protected by the Ban of Hours.”
The shortest courser stepped forward and held his hand out to help Michael down from the stone. Michael hesitated, then took the hand, realizing he would exhibit his fear otherwise. He didn’t know what he would do next. He doubted he could successfully cast a shadow with so little preparation, and so many Sidhe on alert.
“I am Gwinat,” said the Sidhe who had offered his hand, “I am your intercept. You are in possession of a horse of the Irall.”
“It was given to me,” Michael said.
“That is irrelevant. No one, especially a human, can be in possession of a horse from the stables of Adonna’s temple.”
“It was the horse of Alyons,” Ulath said, glancing between Gwinat and Michael. “You are well aware of that.”
“And for stealing that horse, Alyons was sent to the Blasted Plain. That was his punishment. We could not reclaim the horse—he put his imprint on it and it would have been of no use to the temple. Sidhe law does not recognize the return of stolen property, anyway—certainly not horses.”
Ulath touched Michael on the cheek. “Alyons’ shadow took revenge on you,” she said. “After Alyons’ death, the horse had to be returned to the Irall, or left to die.”
“He gave it to me,” Michael said hollowly. Then, suddenly crafty, “And I’ve come to return it.”
Gwinat smiled in appreciation, then shook his head. “You were his enemy, and you killed him, no?”
“I didn’t want to be his enemy. I didn’t kill him.”
“Come.” The coursers drew up around him, cutting off any hope of escape. Ulath withdrew her hand and backed away. He probed her fleetingly and found regret but no deep sorrow. “The Irall does not approve of the Ban’s policy toward humans,” Gwinat informed her.
“The Irall has no power over the Ban. She was appointed by Adonna. What does Adonna say?”
Gwinat smiled snakishly and bowed his head. “We will remove this one. That is the law.”
Michael
What? Who is it?
Go with them
He looked at Ulath but she hadn’t sent any messages, and it hadn’t felt like the Ban—or Death’s Radio. Who, then?
He walked between the coursers, onto the stepping stone which led to the streets below, then through the streets to where their horses—and Alyons’—waited. A small number of Sidhe females watched as the coursers allowed Michael to mount the sky-blue horse, mounted their own, and rode with him through the northern gates of Inyas Trai. Gwinat turned to look back through the gates, still smiling.
“I don’t see what even a human would find of value in there,” he said softly. “The Spryggla took their revenge on us when they built it, just as Alyons took his revenge on you, eh?”
Michael looked straight ahead, down a wide stone road that passed straight as a shadow through an avenue of black stone pillars, and beyond, to the gates of the temple of Adonna.
They were taking him to the Irall.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The Irall loomed, its black central tower smooth and round and featureless, tapering to an anonymous needle point. Around its base were irregular clusters of smaller towers, all inclined toward the center. The towers rose from a smooth dome of silky gray rock.
Gwinat and the coursers led Michael down the dark stone road, between pillars as shiny as polished metal yet as black as night, with gleams buried in their depths like eyes, enjoying his discomfort, his fear.
Nothing the Crane Women had taught him could possibly have prepared him for this.
The entrance was surprisingly small, just wide enough for three horses abreast, and perhaps two heads taller than the coursers riding on either side of Michael. The walls of the tunnel were cupped like the walls of a glacial cave, and the floor was littered with what looked like dried flowers. The air smelled sweet and dusty, not unpleasant, yet not quite pleasant. Suggestive, haunting, like the smell of
old roses cupped in hands
hidden far beneath the sun
petals falling one by one
scented, black in always-dark.
The message came through stronger than he had ever felt it before, just as the light from the tunnel’s entrance was cut off by a bend in the path. The coursers pushed on, having no need for the light. Michael, trying to listen for the voice again, heard Gwinat dimly: “We’re to take you to the Testament.”
As Michael’s eyes adjusted, he saw the tunnel had broadened and was filled with a faint greenish glow. Ahead, on walkways to either side, two long lines of figures shuffled in single file, eyes staring forward. They were Breeds, and each carried a green ceramic basin filled with black liquid. Michael tried to examine each face as they passed, looking for Lirg, but there were far too many and he wasn’t sure he could remember what Lirg looked like anyway.
The tunnel opened onto an immense smoky chamber, its ceiling lost in darkness. The walls on either side were pocked with holes thirty to forty feet in diameter, their lower edges stained by a continuous rusty dripping. The horses splashed in an inches-deep layer of silty liquid rippling across the floor. Alyons’ horse—or rather Adonna’s—twitched its ears and withers uneasily.
The next chamber was like the inside of a cartoon beehive, circular horizontal ribs stacked layer upon layer to form a dome. In the middle of the chamber was a depressed amphitheater with yard-high steps leading down to a rusty pool of water. All Michael could smell now was stale water.
The coursers escorted him around the amphitheater and led him down a side hallway. They passed a line of marching Sidhe, dressed only in gray kilts.
All of Adonna’s attendants were male, apparently; the Irall was a male sanctuary.
“What is the Testament?” Michael asked.
Gwinat turned to him. “The trial chamber of Adonna’s judges. The meeting pla
ce of the Maln.” He did not need to probe Michael’s aura to speak English.
“I thought that was in the mountains,” Michael said. Gwinat smiled at the absurdity of trying to correct human misperceptions.
“I mean, that’s where you train priests.” Michael remained quiet for a few minutes, then said, “It’s obvious I’m guilty, under your law. Why should you try me? Isn’t the Maln all-powerful? Or is my ignorance some excuse?”
“Your guilt is an excuse,” Gwinat said.
Michael had to think harder than he had ever thought before. There had to be some way out of the situation, some supreme effort or cleverness the Crane Women had instilled that he had temporarily forgotten.
Ahead, an electric blue glow suffused through the tunnel like a fog. The horses took them through wreaths of bluish mist. The mist curled with sentient gestures, curious, cold.
The air cleared and Michael saw they were advancing across some tremendous open space, the interior of the dome itself; all the other chambers had been contained in the walls of the Irall. Long minutes passed before he sighted a stone table on the otherwise bare floor, and in tall stone seats surrounding the table, four Sidhe in black robes, facing inward.
The coursers led Michael in a circle around the table. The four Sidhe in black watched him closely. The floor crawled with dim patches of blue mist, shot through with transitory lines of green and black.
“Tra gahn,” said one of the four, rising and pushing back the stone chair with a grating rumble. He looked into Michael’s eyes and made a gesture to Gwinat. Gwinat took Michael’s arm and pulled him from the horse, setting him on the ground with a wrenching pain in his shoulder.
As he turned, he saw that a stone amphitheater now surrounded the table. On the risers stood a crowd of plumed, dazzle-robed Sidhe males. They all stared at Michael and picked at him with a silent chorus of sharp-edged probes, seeking a way through his defenses.